


the trick is to keep breathing

by opheliahyde



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Blood, F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:31:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1977813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliahyde/pseuds/opheliahyde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-season one. Based on the prompt <i>we found love in a hopeless place</i>. Kate gets her brother back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the trick is to keep breathing

Kate steals the cash and the car, scribbling a note to leave on the table.

_You know why._

Scott laughs, keeps laughing in the passenger’s seat with his feet up on the dash. “I guess it’s true what they say, turnabout being fair play and all,” he says, wheezing before his voice clears. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“It’s a one-time thing,” she says, hands gripping the wheel tight, glancing over at Scott.

(She keeps looking, keeps needing to see him, to prove that he’s there or to keep an eye on him, she isn’t sure, both bubbling with happiness under her skin and shaking with nerves—she remembers his teeth, their father’s blood on his mouth, keeps thinking, _he’d been with Carlos this entire time, no telling how many people he’s killed, people he’s eaten_ —it’s a strange feeling to be more scared of her little brother than Seth Gecko.)

Scott’s mouth is tight when he smiles at her, like he can sense the tension in her limbs, maybe smell her fear. “Yeah, whatever,” he says. “Why waste skills when you’ve got them?”

“Scott.”

Kate lets his name hang there, not sure what else to say, thinks about telling him to put his feet down, but she’d never been good at playing mom and she can’t boss him around, not when they’re trying this out, just the two of them now.

She can’t chase him away like before.

“We’ll see,” she breathes out, meeting his gaze when she glances over, shivering at the intensity, like he’d been staring and she hadn’t known.

 

 

—

 

They sleep curled together during the day, Scott and her, his gangly arms wrapped around her, keeping her close to his chest—she got used to the stillness, the lack of breathing, his heart not beating.

She kept him warm, like a lizard in the sun.

(Her schedule adjusted easily enough—Seth slept through most days, moved during the night, when he wasn’t drinking, when he wasn’t pulling jobs by himself with his poor and clumsy language skills, leaving him shooting more often than not or disappearing and coming back with cash she hadn’t wanted to ask where came from—becoming more nocturnal wasn’t difficult as she might have thought months ago, when she was still early to bed, early to rise, living perfectly within the rules sketched out for her since birth.)

Scott kept crawling in with her and Kate never thought to shove him away, craving the proximity, the contact in ways she hadn’t thought she could miss—affection was always free in their family, her father’s arm around her shoulders, his hand ruffling Scott’s hair, their mother kissing them both.

(With Seth, she got used to distance, used to shut down silences and careful movements—unless he was drunk and spilling secrets she didn’t care to know, didn’t want to be the keeper of, ugly dark things he should have kept locked away and she had wanted to hit him for setting them on her. Her own demons were enough for her, she didn’t need his.)

Scott nuzzles at her neck when he stirs, nosing along her throat. Kate wakes and pushes him away, shoving him off the bed as she pulls herself into the corner, heart pounding and alert, eyeing him as he picks himself off the floor. His eyes flash golden and she can see his teeth, razors glinting in the dull moonlight peeping through the curtains, but he shakes his head and they recede, his eyes going dark.

“Sorry,” Scott says with a fissure in his voice that feels like a break in her ribs that keeps growing wider, bone poking at her lungs; he says it soft, hands on the mattress where she can see them, not moving any closer. “I’m trying, you know. I’m trying, it’s just—”

(He promised her he wouldn’t kill, and Kate felt guilty making him promise that, force him to battle against his nature in order to make her comfortable, but she couldn’t stand to think of him out in the night, of him hunting and coming back to her with blood on his clothes, on his mouth.

She doesn’t know what kind of person it makes her.

Kate had told Seth sorry once, _sorry Richie got turned, sorry he’s a monster now, sorry you had to leave him_ , and she meant it, more genuine than the time she told him good luck.

He laughed at her and she hadn’t expected that, the rough, awful sound of it, loud enough to fill the empty spaces of the room. “You think I left him?” he had asked, eyeing her like a lion right before it tore an antelope’s throat out. “Tell me, is that what you did? Did you leave your brother?”

“I told him I never wanted to see him again.”

She said it with her face burning hot, flushing with shame. She wanted to claw at his face, anger twisting in the pit of her stomach at how he could make her feel like this, how he had the right when it was his fault, everything was his fault.

“I guess we’re different. I’d _never_ leave my brother.”

“Even if he’s a monster?”

“Kate,” he laughs again, lighter, more air underneath it. “We’ve always been monsters.”)

Kate reaches out to Scott, inching across the bed until she can slide her legs over the side, feet knocking against his knees. “I know,” she says, cupping his cheek as she pulls his head into her lap, letting his arms wrap around her as she strokes her fingers through his hair. “I know, I know, I’m sorry.”

 

 

—

 

Kate gives him her wrist.

Scott stares at her, his eyes changing—pupils narrowing, color lightening to gold, glowing through the dark—breathing quick, but steady, keeping control of himself with his body still, shoulders tense. “Are you sure?” he asks. “Do you even trust me that much?”

She gasps, like he hit her in the gut and stole the breath from her lungs, but she holds firm, lifting her hand, bringing her arm closer to his mouth. “Just—no venom, I don’t want…” She stops herself, unsure how to reject him without hurting him. “No venom, okay? Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” he says, touching her hand, locking his fingers through hers. “Carlos taught me. I won’t turn you.”

Kate nods. “Good.”

“Thank you,” Scott says, brushing his mouth against her palm. Kate can’t help drawing her free hand up, running it over his hair, throat tight, unable to say _you’re welcome_ without choking on it.

It doesn’t hurt as much as Kate had thought, just a pinch, like a needle slipping into her skin at the doctor’s office. Scott bites her careful, teeth sinking in slow and she keeps breathing, deep breaths, petting Scott’s hair because the movement is soothing, the texture under her fingers familiar. She doesn’t think about what he’s doing, sucking now at her wrist, her blood filling his mouth—he moans, and it runs up her arm like a livewire, nerve-endings firing off, making her shake when she promised herself she’d be still, let him take and have.

Scott pulls away when her head gets hazy and she feels a bit faint, and she watches him wipe at him mouth, red still clinging to his lips.

It’s easier to pull him up than it was to decide to let him feed on her, hands around his jaw as she opens her knees to tug Scott closer, drawing his mouth against hers, kissing Scott a simpler act somehow, even if he tastes of her blood, iron and copper thick in his mouth.

 _Inevitable,_ maybe.

Kate gasps into his mouth and rests their foreheads together. “I love you,” she says, like it can prove something, like it doesn’t make him a monster anymore if she can say that and mean it, if she can remember he’s still her brother.

“I know,” he says, curling her hair around his fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://richiesseth.tumblr.com)!


End file.
